Chapter 20 #2
When my phone chimes, I see a message from Kenzie, and I latch onto the distraction. It’s a series of red exclamation marks, which is code for “the stalker left you something.”
I stare at it for a minute, trying to decide if I even want to know. I should just enjoy my time with my friends, but my head is all over the place today.
Ultimately, I decide to call her while the girls chat amongst themselves.
“Hey,” Kenzie answers, slightly out of breath. “I only have a few minutes. Gotta go change into my costume.”
“Okay, can you give me the TLDR version?”
“There were five notes, Chantel.” Concern bleeds through her voice. “And they were deranged.”
“Well, that seems excessive.” I try to make a joke out of it, but truthfully, it’s a little terrifying how fast he’s escalating.
“Most of what he said doesn’t even make sense. There was a bunch of rambling stuff about you cheating on him, and how he knows where you were last night…and he said you ruined what you had together.”
“Jesus,” I mutter under my breath. “You weren’t kidding when you said deranged.”
“Will you please let me help you?” Kenzie begs. “I can talk to Andreas and Elias. You trust them, right? They could figure out what to do.”
“No.” I shut that down quickly, eyeing my friends and hoping none of them heard that.
The last thing I need is the Greeks involved when the Vitales are keeping a close eye on me.
“I have it covered,” I assure her.
“As in you’re asking your friends for help, and not keeping this from them, right?” she presses.
“Yes.” I blow out a breath.
I’ll have to tell Cristian about this later, since he’s taken it upon himself to deal with this problem.
“Okay, please be careful in the meantime,” she says.
“Alright, go do your costume change. I don’t want to make you late.”
We say our goodbyes, and I hang up the phone, casting a quick look over the table. Fortunately, nobody seems to have overheard anything, so I don’t have to make a big deal of it right now.
“Hey.” Lucia elbows me again. “Check it out. He finally took off his shirt.”
I glance over at the men, only to find Cristian staring right at me.
That same weird energy sparks between us, and I try to avert my gaze, but it just ends up coasting over his bare chest.
“Does it look like he got new ink?” Lucia asks, noticing it the same time I do.
It’s a small geometric shape, so eerily familiar it makes my heart pound.
“It also looks like he got attacked by the same bitey fish as you,” she says suspiciously.
I swallow as my gaze lands on the mark—in the exact spot where I left one on Bran last night.
I try to think, or breathe, or do something, but I feel paralyzed, and I can’t organize my thoughts. Then he turns to grab his water bottle, exposing the tattoo across his back.
Raven wings.
The world tilts as I shove my chair back and rise to my feet.
“Chantel, are you alright?” Mariella asks.
“I just have to…bathroom.” The words come out in broken fragments, and I don’t wait to see how they’re received.
I head straight into the house and start to run.
It isn’t logical.
I can’t even leave the island until someone arranges a boat for me. But it isn’t logic in the driver’s seat right now.
I just need to get outside, then I can figure something out.
I could cross the island and go to Ares. Except, visiting his house would defeat the whole point of protecting my identity.
I’m not any closer to a solution when a muscular arm wraps around my waist and lifts me into the air.
A shriek bubbles up my throat, but he claps his other hand over my mouth so it doesn’t escape.
He hauls me toward his wing of the house while I hang there in shock.
This can’t be happening.
The reel from last night loops through my mind as I start making comparisons all over again.
The signs were there. I just thought I was imagining the similarities because Cristian had gotten so deep inside my head. But as I slowly come to terms with reality, all I can think is that this man who I thought hated me is the same one I unknowingly spent an entire year with.
I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown when he enters his wing and slams the door behind us.
We don’t make it down the corridor.
He sets me on my feet and presses me against the wall, caging me in with his body as he lifts my chin with his fingers.
“Running away from me, dea?”
“This can’t be real,” I blurt.
“It is.” His voice roughens at the edges.
“It’s been you the whole time?”
“Yes.”
There’s no regret in his response. No uncertainty. Nothing to indicate that he ever thought this might have been a bad idea. And that’s when I remember he knew my name on our video call.
“When did you find out it was me?”
This time, there’s a beat of hesitation before he answers.
“I knew the whole time.”
“Oh, Jesus.” I slip out from beneath his arm, pacing the hall as I mentally unravel the entire timeline of our history.
He lets me have that because he knows me—intimately.
He knows when to talk me through it and when to give me silence.
He’s seen me at my most vulnerable, and suddenly, I feel like such an idiot.
“Was this a game to you?” I ask. “Did you and Marco…plan this?”
“That’s where your mind goes?” His jaw tightens. “You think I liked seeing you with him?”
“You knew who I was the entire time,” I choke out. “You must have gotten some kind of sick enjoyment from that.”
He stalks toward me and backs me against the wall, his lips so close to mine, I can almost taste them.
“Sick?” he murmurs. “No. But I definitely enjoyed it.”
“Did it happen by accident?” I swallow. “Us being matched at Sanctum?”
“No.”
My thoughts buffer as a swell of emotion overwhelms me. I feel raw, exposed, betrayed, and confused. But worse than that is how much I like what he just admitted.
I should be angry. I should want to walk away right now. But the primitive part of my brain is stuck on the fact that he wanted me so much, he set this entire thing up.
“You didn’t want to know,” he reminds me. “You stated that explicitly on your form.”
“Yes, but, Cristian—" My voice fractures as I fail to find an argument for that. “I don’t understand. I thought you hated me.”
“Is that what it feels like when we fight?” He presses closer, his rigid cock straining against me.
When I don’t answer him, his gaze drifts to the bite mark on my neck. “I think you get off on it.”
I want to deny it, because it sounds insane, but maybe there’s some truth to it. Sparring with Cristian has annoyed me beyond comprehension, but it’s also fed something inside me.
Whenever those dark eyes land on me from across the room, the anticipation of what he might say or do always makes my heart beat faster.
Part of me recognized there was something wrong with me, because I liked the game we played far too much. I just didn’t know he actually liked it too.
Regardless, there are so many reasons we shouldn’t be doing this.
“What about Jolie?” I ask.
“What about her?” He dips his head, breathing me in as his hands slide over my hips.
“You were with her at Eden.”
“Not by choice.” He twists his fingers through my hair, angling my head back as his gaze drops to my lips.
My breath catches as I register the dark hunger in his eyes. He doesn’t just want this. It’s primal for him.
I never could have known how much the mask actually protected me. Watching Cristian unleash his intensity is more dangerous than my wildest fantasies ever could have imagined.
And when he grips a handful of my ass, letting out one of those masculine growls I love so much, I know I’m so screwed.
I’m not sure how it happens. One second we’re breathing the same air, and in the next my lips are crushed against his in a rough, all-consuming kiss.
I get caught up in a feverish haze, drinking him in with a sense of urgency I can’t rationalize. My hands have seemingly developed a mind of their own, roaming over him with abandon. He’s so solid and warm and…mine.
That thought sends everything screeching to a halt as I come to my senses and end the kiss with a breathless declaration.
“Stop kissing me.”
A laugh rumbles from his chest as he pulls back to meet my gaze. “You kissed me.”
“No, I didn’t.” My face flushes.
“You definitely did.” He grabs me and drags me closer. “Are you going to deny that you liked it?”
“It didn’t mean anything,” I counter. “That was only for last night.”
“If you say so.” His lips ghost over my throat, completely disorienting me.
Every last brain cell evaporates as I melt into him, and a desperate ache claws its way through me.
“Tell me you want me inside you.” He bites the words against my ear.
A strangled sound ejects from my mouth as I try to recall one of the thousand reasons we shouldn’t be doing this. I know they exist, but I’m drawing a blank, and in the moment, I don’t really care.
“I want you inside me,” I rasp.
Just one more time, to get it out of my system.
That’s what I tell myself as he lifts me into his arms and carries me down the hallway.
I can’t focus on anything else as I soak up the warmth of his bare chest, fingers threading through his hair as I kiss my way down his throat.
This kind of chemistry is insane. It’s definitely not normal. But the baser side of me doesn’t care to analyze that too deeply as I slip my free hand into his pants.
He bites out a curse as I wrap my palm around his cock and start stroking him. “We’re not going to make it to the bedroom if you keep doing that.”
“I don’t care,” I pant. “Fuck me right here.”
“No.” He smacks me on the ass.
“What the hell?” I glare up at him.
“Don’t start pretending you don’t like it now.”
I stroke him harder, taking satisfaction when a tortured sound gets caught in his throat. But when we reach his room, all bets are off.
He kicks the door shut behind us and deposits me on the bed, eyes darkening as they move over me.
His palm drifts up my calf, all the way to the thigh-high slit of my dress, pushing the fabric higher until most of my leg is bared.
“Look how fucking pretty you are.” He releases a rough breath, fingers roaming back down my leg. “Mia ladroncina.”